Cheesecake & Homemade Chocolate

So today’s post is all about Sunday’s dessert, which you can tell from the title was cheesecake and homemade chocolate, both ‘white’ and dark chocolate. Some may say that this is ill timed as it is Ash Wednesday and a lot of people will begin their 40 days of lent but alas! I have had a busy start to the week and this was the earliest I could put this post out. I really need to start using that scheduling option!

Valentine’s day was sort of deferred to the Sunday as that was the only time we could spend the whole day together and I decided that I would make a nice meal and we would have some wine and I would make a dessert or two! I made individual lime and ginger cheesecakes and your standard vanilla cheesecake. I then made two types of chocolates dark and ‘white’ White is in quotation marks as it really isn’t chocolate but all will be revealed later in this post! The chocolate is also dairy and gluten free! Wahoo!

So without any further preamble lets get to the recipe!

The Recipe

For the Cheesecakes…

Ingredients:

This recipe allows for 2 individual cheesecakes of each flavour.

Vanilla Cheesecake…

1 tub of soft cheese of your choice 180g I used Philly

1/2 packet of Foxs’ Crinkle cut butter or your choice of (digestives are a good option)

2 teaspoons of Vanilla extract

30g butter (not shown) I used Bertolli but use whichever

2 tablespoons of icing sugar

For the lime and ginger…

See above but swap out the Foxs’ butter biscuits for the Foxs’ Crinkle Crunch Ginger and the Vanilla extract for the rind of 2 limes and the juice of 1/2 of one don’t make the mistake I did and use the juice of the whole lime as it makes the cheesecake too wet so you will need to either freeze the cheesecake for it to set, use gelatine, or use more cheese, I leave that decision up to you!

Method

Break biscuits of choice. I put mine into a sandwich bag and then bashed with a rolling pin before transferring into a bowl. This my dear friends was the best part of the task! I didn’t know I had so much frustration I needed to let out! 🙂

Add melted butter and mix well to combine before pressing the mixture firmly into ramekins

Then you need to prepare the cheese. Side note I really love the word cheese it reminds me of my childhood where bad smells were cheesy and mum and dad when they displayed any affection toward one another were cheesy and of course cheesy now makes me think of melted cheese and well that’s yummy!

So prepare the cheese

Empty the Philly or your cream cheese of choice into a bowl add the icing sugar, vanilla extract and mix well to combine.

Put mixture in to the ramekins over the biscuit base and chill in the fridge for a minimum of 30 minutes to set

Lime Cheesecake….

Do exactly the same as above but omit the vanilla extract, instead you want to put the juice of 1/2 the limes (see above as to why) and the rind of two limes. You could use 1 but I don’t feel it tastes lime enough and I like my citrus to taste citrus!

And Voila!

Vanilla Cheesecake Stats…

per serving

Calories: 501

Fat: 27g – Saturated fat 15g

Carbs 53g

Protein 9g

Lime and Ginger Cheesecake

Calories: 414

Fat: 17g saturated fat 10g

Carbs 55g

Protein 10g

Next onto the homemade chocolate….

Ingredients

For the dark chocolate…..

1/2 cup of Cacao Butter

1/2 cup of Coconut Oil

1/2 cup of Cacao Powder

4-8 tablespoons of Agave Nectar (per your preference)

For the White chocolate…

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

Omit the 1/2 cup of Cacao Powder and replace with 1/2 cup of Cashew butter

All other ingredients remain unchanged.

Method

Cacao butter works best if you grate it first so this is what I did!

I then added this butter to the coconut oil and put this bowl over water to create a Bain Marie to melt the butter and oil. Make sure the water does not come into contact with the contents of the bowl otherwise you will have to throw it away and start again.

I highly recommend this coconut oil and I will be writing a blog post on the many way I use this stuff! This particular brand is amazing and I would recommend you purchase this one, but again this will all be in the post around coconut oil.

Once melted, remove from the heat and add the cacao butter and sweeten to taste. For me 4 tablespoons is sufficient as I seem to have lost my sweet tooth now that I’ve been eating more healthily. However everyone’s palettes are different so taste and adjust accordingly.

You are then left with silky, smooth and luxurious Dark chocolate.

The procedure is the same to make white chocolate but instead of adding the cacao powder add the cashew butter instead.

I only use Meridian as it is 100% cashews nothing added! once melted you are left with this….

Now time for the fun part! Dunking the Strawberries or whatever fruit you are using. The strawberries I purchased were lovely and juicy.

Don’t forget to wash them mind!

Once dipped put them on a tray lined with parchment (baking) paper

Pop them in the fridge and enjoy later!

I had so much chocolate left over I decide to whip up a batch of chocolate bites. I had some mixed nuts that hadn’t yet been opened, it was a 200g bag. I forgot to take a picture of it… Oops.

Add to your chocolate

Stir to combine. Then you need to put the chocolate into a freezeable container to set the chocolate. It should be noted that the chocolate will melt if not kept cold.

After at least an hour, turn out and cut into bite sized pieces.

I tried to work out calories for you but MyFitnessPal wouldn’t let me work it out sorry about that guys!

So, there you have it Sunday’s desserts. What you think 3 simple easy to do desserts? Think you will give them a try? What’s your go to dessert recipe?